


Mary

by kalijean



Series: Arch to the Sky [6]
Category: due South
Genre: Family, Fluff, Gen, Leaside (1971-1990)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-03
Updated: 2013-02-03
Packaged: 2017-11-28 00:03:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/667992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalijean/pseuds/kalijean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1981: Her name is Mary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mary

**Author's Note:**

> A piece written a while ago that I forgot to post here. It was written for Podfic_lover when she donated wonderfully to help us make sure our cat, Mike, was still healthy after the sickness and death of his sister. That was several months ago and I'm very happy to say he's doing beautifully.

Myra had begun spending more time in her own flat, and she was abruptly starting to suspect this was having some adverse affect on her brother.

She'd had the thing since Renfield was six; rent paid by her parents so long as she was continuing her education. It really had been long overdue that she properly used it. She had phased it in slowly, so that the tears would be minimal. Often he had gone with her, and still did; it seemed to help, giving him the impression that he had another home. A hideaway with his sister. That still impacted _dating_ , but a great deal less than before.

She thought it was going well. Balance between brother and life was mostly achieved, with minimal tears on the part of either.

Until, for the first time at ten years old, Renfield didn't want to come over when he was invited.

Myra wasn't going to admit to being mildly hurt by that.

She came home - home-home - to a sick father; he was always the man to give stern buck-up speeches to his children when they were down, but the truth was, he became a giant baby where illness was concerned. Not that her parents intended for her to know that. Being third had certain perks of going unnoticed where the inseparable twins could not. Their mother was a sturdy woman who inevitably covered for their father with a quietly amused grin, but on his own he couldn't quite hide his distress at streaming eyes and nose.

"Cold, Father?" she asked as she met him in the hallway. She came and went freely, where Renfield was concerned; her visits were generally not announced, but they were never surprising, either. 

"No, no; quite warm, actually." He blinked and corrected himself when Myra gestured toward his handkerchief. "Oh! Oh. Al--"

Ah. Myra stood back.

The sneeze was cataclysmic, it seemed, buried primly into the hanky, and he finished his sentence without missing a further beat.

"-lergies."

She winced, patting her father as only a girl child could. Out of respect, she relegated the noise he made to the type of sound that was most certainly not a whimper. He thanked her with a wave of the hanky, and she left the poor man to his seasonal misery.

Myra found herself making a mental note to ask her mother when they’d installed a lock on Renfield’s door.

The knob rattled, the tone of it a touch incredulous, if she were to assign a tone other than metallic, and she could hear beyond the door the type of scramble that was far more suited to a teenage boy’s bedroom. At ten years old she’d hadn’t been expecting _that_ type of secrecy for another two or three years yet. She gave in and knocked.

“Just a moment.”

“...of course.” She hadn’t meant to sound put out. The flavor of her hypocrisy amused even her.

The door opened - only a hair - to reveal a look on her little brother’s face that was strangely rehearsed. Perhaps he was precocious. Perhaps certain brief talks were due to be had soon. She was never very certain whether her or their mother would handle that one, but she was braced for a barrage of questions when the time came.

He was... not unkempt in any fashion, but a pair of blue eyes seemed to suggest _go away_ even so.

Myra certainly hadn’t given birth to this boy, but she had what she knew were distinctly parental instincts when it came to him. She wasn’t terribly far removed from trying to evade those same instincts on the part of her parents.

Her angelic little brother wasn’t avoiding her. Neither had she caught him in any sort of personal position. He wasn’t red.

He was guilty.

“Hello,” he said, sugary-sweet, but not bounding to hug her.

“Hello, Renfield,” Myra replied in exactly the same tone. She gestured at the sliver of space in the door. “May I--?”

Her brother laughed. It was the nervous, polite-refusal laughter of their father when he would prefer one of his colleagues not to pay any mind to the torrent of questions his ten-year-old was currently asking. It was utterly bizarre on Renfield.

Myra most assuredly returned the laughter.

It was a challenge between sister and child, and Renfield’s resolve was impressive for his age, but Myra could hold a fake smile as long as _any_ daughter of a family of lawyers.

“Yes,” he said eventually, some mix between sunk and scrambling.

They did a little dance as Myra stepped into the door, the type one does in a revolving door, or perhaps a small narrow passageway when going in opposite directions. 

Well. Whatever it was, at least it handily confirmed that her brother wasn’t becoming a skilled liar under their noses.

She led the dance, and upon stepping into his room, could see nothing broken, Satanic, communistic, drug-influenced or American.

What she could _smell_ , however. 

The twitch of her nostrils was minute, but that of her eyebrow was not. A few possibilities were considered and rejected in rapid succession; Renfield had never had a problem in that area, and the edge to the scent was unmistakable.

“I’ve missed you,” she said. It was calculated. She also meant it. The balance of hope on Renfield’s face tipped over into guilt as she watched, and he shuffled in place, quite firmly looking everywhere but the closet.

Her eyebrows went up.

“I missed you, too?” It was as though he was answering her eyebrows. Which wasn’t uncharacteristic of their communication, but this time it was far more like a puppy who wasn’t sure what was happening next, and was beginning to worry that it might be a rolled up newspaper.

Myra was waiting for it. Renfield could often be likened unto a shaken bottle of fizzy soda; when something stirred it, going anywhere near the cap meant explosion was imminent. 

Something under the bed shuffled.

Myra crossed her arms.

“It’s-- I-- See, it’s-- Well--” Renfield squirmed in place, the containment of that cap moments from flying off to the ceiling.

The shuffling continued. Myra didn’t really need to look down when something soft-furred and smooth-motioned weaved lovingly between her legs.

Renfield shut his eyes, balled up his hands, and blurted the next part out with what could only be described as adorable defiance and plea rolled up into one.

“--her name is Mary, and she’s my friend!”

 

The cat was striped, gray with big yellow eyes. She was young. Renfield had even named her according to the family pattern, which was either painfully cute or an attempt to be even harder to deny should he be caught, Myra wasn’t certain.

Myra had gleaned quite a bit in the journey from defiance to ear-splitting bawling. The cat was the last of the litter to be given away, free to a good home, or at least as good as a ten year old could make it; the owner had apparently ‘looked shabby’ and this was sufficient evidence to Renfield’s young mind that the cat would therefore have been unhappy, if not in danger, left with him; a litterbox had been fashioned from one of their mum’s old shoeboxes filled with sandbox sand; said litterbox had been cleaned _with their mum’s nice spaghetti ladle_ ; this had been going on for at least a _week_.

Lord in Heaven, there were days she came close to asking her parents just when they lost track of their shared attention spans.

All of this was strong evidence in favor of Renfield being _quite responsible_ , apparently, and all he needed was enough time to show them all that he could be trusted with a pet.

Renfield had clutched the cat, only partially by the kitten’s will, and his eyes grew wider when Myra asked him whether he thought that proof of responsibility included deception and sneakiness. And their father’s allergies.

Her brother had detected the Lesson coming in all of this, and it hadn’t looked good for Mary.

Myra had discreetly thrown out the makeshift litter box, trusting that her father would steer as far clear of a wailing child as possible, and made a note to come back with some air freshener when this was over.

The cat was clinging to Renfield’s shirt all the way to Myra’s car, Renfield clinging back, crying so loud she was absolutely certain the neighbors must think she was beating her brother. The cat occasionally added to the caterwauling. Her brother’s ability to cry freely had always given their father a bit of a twitch to his off-and-on mustache, and normally Myra stubbornly felt she would protect that trait. Now, she just wanted her _ears back_.

Myra was still giving a great deal of consideration to where she was actually going when the cat let out a pitiful, distinctive cat-in-the-car yowl that would set precedent for the journey.

 

Myra went in somewhere probably to find out where the pound was so they could come and take Mary away and Mary wouldn’t stop panting and clawing to him and crying so somehow Mary _knew_ , Renfield couldn’t stop _crying either_ , and now that they were alone in the car, getting out of it and running away together was starting to seem like it wouldn’t be that _hard_.

But he would miss his sister, and he didn’t have any money for tuna, and she’d thrown out Mary’s litter box!

“I’m _sorry_ ,” he kept saying when he could get control of his lungs, and Mary _understood him_ , because she always yowled back.

She’d been with him for days. They slept in the same bed. He fed her tuna in a little bowl and she rubbed up against his feet when he dangled them over the bed and she purred when he cuddled her up to his chest. She was his friend and he took good care of her. It wasn’t _fair_.

He didn’t know where Mary would end up. All he could see were strangers who wouldn’t love her enough and probably would rename her something stupid and how she would probably think he didn’t want her anymore. And they would be mean to her. They just _would_.

Strangers wandered by the car, wheeling carts into the store, just to stare baffled at the wailing coming from within the car in spot C-3. Mary’s panting produced drool that was leaving a large wet spot on his shoulder. He wondered if that was like crying for cats.

His throat hurt from crying, but it wouldn’t let up, and he didn’t want it to. When Myra appeared in the shop doorway, he felt a spike of that urge to run; now or never. He could make it. The woods would be safe for a kitty. He flexed his hand in the door a moment, daring himself to do it, but sighed. Chicken. He was chicken, and now Mary was going to be given away to circus people or something.

He wiped his face, and with the removal of the blur of tears came the realization that Myra carried bags of things.

Surely this wasn’t the time...?

A painful kind of hope rose in his chest. 

Myra looked _annoyed_ , which was an expression Renfield positively _hated_ , but he had the most backward feeling that he didn’t this time.

She got closer and closer. He would’ve gotten out to help her with the bags, if he hadn’t had a cat imbedded in his chest. His face was pressed hopefully to the passenger side window by the time she got to the car, and left a tearful, greasy print where he’d been when she sat back down in the driver’s seat with a rustle of plastic.

Renfield found himself in an uncontrollable sniff cycle, his body caught somewhere between trying to keep the snot from running out of his nose, trying to stop crying long enough to speak, and trying to let out another sob. It made him feel like his chest would burst.

Mary was, meanwhile, busy trying to climb into his hair.

Myra’s soft shush was almost lost in the crinkle of plastic bags.

“Please--”

“Ssh, Renfield.” Myra pulled a miracle out of one of those bags. A water dish. She hauled another bag from outside the car door, depositing it in her lap. Cat litter. “See?”

Renfield nodded, able to grab enough sense to do that.

Myra sighed, and it was when she cocked a little half-smile at Mary pawing through Renfield’s hair that his heart finally figured out she was there to stay.

 

So. Myra had a cat.

A cat named in anagram of herself. Which was just great, because the gentleman she’d thought promising had mentioned some time before that he was allergic.

She counted herself fortunate not to have inherited that from their father. She got the feeling that Renfield would have braved the perpetual cold to keep her, for his own part. 

Her brother was asleep on her couch, and her cat was asleep on her brother, having lulled him there with the press of paws and soft purring and the sound of his own snuffly giggles.

How did he ever hide this for so long if he made those noises?

She’d found a corner for the litter box, and another for the food. The vet appointment would be made. (Myra shuddered to think of poor Renfield if he’d somehow kept her long enough to go into heat. A backwards-walking cat yowling from his closet would have only led to confused embarrassment.) It wasn’t difficult to carve out a space for the little creature, even if Myra was contemplating renaming her.

Myra yawned and laid a blanket over her brother, silently praying she could get the stink out of the boy’s bedroom. The pair looked angelic together, snoozing away; that didn’t mean they hadn’t left something ungodly in their wake.

It was all right. She couldn’t have done anything else.

 

“I will miss you.”

Mary darted back and forth with the motion of feathers at Renfield’s hand, occasionally batting it. Or him. He would never have declawed her, so he took the odd sharp little snag in stride.

Depot was a hair’s breadth away. The idea still seemed almost too big to look at; sometimes looking at what he would leave behind came easier instead, as strange as that seemed. Mary would stay with Myra, as she always had. And she would be Renfield’s cat, as she always had.

Even if John was a disturbingly natural cat person, a fact that he still wasn’t quite sure if he was annoyed by.

“You know, if I thought I could hide you under my bed, I would take you with me?” He chuckled, watching her chew on the end of the feather she’d caught.

“If you did, could I come, too?” Myra scritched a hand through his hair, seeming to appear from nowhere, but she always walked softly. 

“So long as you can hold onto the box spring, of course.” Mary chased the softer end of the toy all the way up to Renfield’s lap, and he released it, allowing her to gnaw at the catnip portion while he stroked her back.

“I’m afraid I’m not so agile as she is.”

“I’ll miss you, too.”

Renfield tipped his head up.

From behind the couch, Myra kissed his forehead.

The toy tumbled away from his lap, and Mary bounded off to chase it.

 

**1996**

Her receptionist was _sniffling_.

Inspector Thatcher had witnessed many reactions to her style of command, but she could not honestly say she'd ever driven one to tears.

The phone was pressed conspiratorially to Turnbull’s ear, and she wasn’t able to catch what he was saying. Complaining about her to someone, perhaps. Typical. 

“I’ll come-- I can request--”

Thatcher was just close enough to catch it. Not complaining. Something clandestine?

“Oh,” the man breathed, before wiping his face. 

It was pathetic. A grown man. She never thought she’d see a Mountie look so much like a little boy.

“Put-- if you could... speaker... yes. Thank you.” Turnbull took three shallow, measured breaths, pressed his face into his hands, and spoke. Awkwardly. But so clearly painfully. “Mary... you... you are a good cat. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Oh.

Thatcher felt her belly hit her shoes, something familiar and deeply _irritating_ for how it felt, and the same part of her that felt irritation felt it was utterly stupid to-- to-- over the _phone_?! She smoothed down her shirt, suddenly feeling like an intruder in her own consulate.

“Good kitty,” Turnbull sighed, clearly barely holding it together. Thatcher would sooner volunteer to join the Musical Ride as its only nude-riding member before admitting that so was she. “Good kitty. I love you.”

The last part had been softest. A secret hushed against just such an eventuality as Thatcher... lurking as she was.

When the silence broke again, it was to quietly thank the person at the other end. It took some time for Turnbull to hang up.

Later, from the privacy of her office, Thatcher buzzed Turnbull at reception. With a voice softer than she liked, she told him there was a shortage of work for the day, and he was to go home.

She ignored the sniffle at the other end.


End file.
